Taxonomy Becker (1979: 10) established Barbaracletodes in the Cletodidae to accommodate two new species, B. barbara Becker, 1979 and B. carola Becker, 1979, but did not designate a type species. The genus is here expressly made available as Barbaracletodes gen. nov. (ICZN Art. 16.1) by fixing B. barbara as the type, consequently taking the authorship and publication date of the present paper, and by explicit reference to Becker’s (1979: 10) original generic diagnosis (ICZN Arts 13.1.2 and 13.3) which serves to distinguish it from other harpacticoid genera. Although B. barbara is named in honour of a woman – Barbara Becker- Schüßler – the name of this species cannot be amended from barbara to barbarae (ICZN Art. 31.1.2—if a noun in the genitive case) since the Code (Art. 31.1) allows nouns in apposition as well as genitive constructions for specific names based on personal names. Barbaracletodes barbara and B. carola are clearly examples of the former. Although Recommendation 31A advises against using personal names in apposition, once such a name has been proposed it cannot be changed.
Por (1986a) considered Barbaracletodes a member of his Cletodidae sensu stricto. In their key to families Huys et al. (1996: 92) placed the genus in the Canthocamptidae, an assignment that was also adopted by Boxshall and Halsey (2004). Gee (1998) excluded Barbaracletodes from the Cletodidae but did not place it elsewhere. Since none of these authors gave a formal justification for their courses of action, Wells (2007) considered Barbaracletodes a genus incertae sedis in the Cletodidae. [details]